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The Sound of Truth
The Sound of Truth is the second single from the metalcore band As I Lay Dying's fourth album An Ocean Between Us. Video The video was premiered on Headbanger's Ball on January 17, 2008. It was directed by Brian Thompson, who also directed the video for Nothing Left, and was filmed at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, CA. The storyline of the video serves as an ironic comment on the irrationality and hypocrisy that takes place in a dystopian futuristic society. The video begins exactly where the video to Nothing Left ended. As the "infected" woman is on the edge of a cliff with two guards behind her, a young girl and a man are seen to watch a transmission of the unnamed dictator through a television. As the woman prepares to die (it is never made clear in what fashion, although it can be presumed that she would be forced to leap to her death), a man is seen yelling violently, ultimately leading a large group of the Infected to rescue the woman, beating her guards to death. At a hidden warehouse in a city, a man knocks on the door, displaying his red swollen hands--the mark of the Infected--to the doorkeeper. Inside the warehouse there is a massive crowd of Infected. A man, presumably one of the leaders of the Infected, is rallying the crowd, and at one point shreds a government propaganda poster, which states, "Condemn The Infected," a motif repeated throughout both this video and Nothing Left. Somewhat ironically, the vitriol with which the crowd reacts to the leader's message mirrors that of the crowd of "pures" who judged the woman in the first video. Later, a girl gazes at the street through a window, where she can see tens of thousands of Infected. They begin to take over the city, burning the clothes which once hid their tell-tale rashes and marks. The dictator, while filming the TV transmission seen during both videos, also notices this, and slowly ceases to rant, watching instead as the Infected take control. He turns, only to see the two guards in the room take off their helmets to reveal themselves as the two leaders of the Infected. They approach the dictator, and the screen goes black. The leaders take him to the ancient Roman Colosseum from Nothing Left, where they judge him in the same way as the woman was first judged. After delivering their verdict--thumbs down--the two men throw him to the ground, where he pleads with the vicious crowd of Infected watching him for mercy. When the leaders lift him, the dictator's gloves fall from his hands. He slowly lifts them and stares at the red, swollen appendages that mark him as an Infected, as behind him, the crowd slowly goes silent, hatred being replaced in their faces by shock, horror and perhaps pity. As the camera shoots the individual reactions of members of the audience, including the woman from Nothing Left, the screen flickers and turns off like an old-fashioned TV transmission. Category:2008 songs